28 Facts About Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art.

Yves Klein was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau realisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany.

Yves Klein was born in Nice, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France.

Yves Klein's parents, Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, were both painters.

Yves Klein's father painted in a loose post-impressionist style, while his mother was a leading figure in Art informel, and held regular soirees with other leading practitioners of this Parisian abstract movement.

Yves Klein received no formal training in art, but his parents exposed him to different styles.

Yves Klein's father was a figurative style painter, while his mother had an interest in abstract expressionism.

From 1942 to 1946, Yves Klein studied at the Ecole Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales.

In early 1948, Yves Klein was exposed to Max Heindel's 1909 text The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception and pursued a membership with an American society dedicated to Rosicrucianism.

Yves Klein travelled to Japan in 1953 where he became, at the age of 25, a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan from the Kodokan, becoming the first European to rise to that rank.

In 1954 Yves Klein wrote a book on judo called Les Fondements du judo.

Yves Klein Peintures anticipated his first two shows of oil paintings, at the Club des Solitaires, Paris, October 1955 and Yves Klein: Proposition monochromes at Gallery Colette Allendy, February 1956.

Yves Klein had studied judo in Japan between 1952 and 1954, and displayed an interest in Zen Buddhism.

Yves Klein celebrated the commission by travelling to Cascia, Italy, to place an ex-voto offering at the Saint Rita Monastery.

Yves Klein wanted his buyers to experience The Void by selling them empty space.

Yves Klein used the other half of the gold to create a series of gold-leafed works, which, along with a series of pink monochromes, began to augment his blue monochromes toward the end of his life.

Yves Klein is well known for a composite photograph, Saut dans le vide, originally published in his 1960 artist's book Dimanche, which apparently shows him jumping off a wall, arms outstretched, towards the pavement.

Yves Klein used the photograph as evidence of his ability to undertake unaided lunar travel.

Yves Klein's work revolved around a Zen-influenced concept he came to describe as "le Vide".

Yves Klein's Void is a nirvana-like state that is void of worldly influences; a neutral zone where one is inspired to pay attention to one's own sensibilities, and to "reality" as opposed to "representation".

Yves Klein tried to make his audience experience a state where an idea could simultaneously be "felt" as well as "understood".

Yves Klein appropriated plaster casts of famous sculptures, such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo, by painting them International Klein Blue; he painted a globe, 3D reliefs of areas of France and dowels which he hung from the ceiling as rain.

Yves Klein stuck sponges to canvases and painted dinner plates.

Yves Klein moved on to exhibit at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, and traveled extensively in the Western US, visiting Death Valley in the Mojave Desert.

In 1962, Yves Klein married Rotraut Uecker who gave birth to their son shortly after his death.

Yves Klein suffered a heart attack while watching the film Mondo cane at the Cannes Film Festival on 11 May 1962.

The Yves Klein archive is housed in Phoenix, Arizona, where his widow Rotraut Klein-Moquay has a home.

Alongside works by Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, Yves Klein's painting RE 46 was among the top-five sellers at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in May 2006.